Co-presence as ethnographic approach

Much of the ethnographic work that goes on at the VKS has been shaped by the tradition of ethnographic lab studies from Science and Technology Studies. These past couple of years, as the VKS has explored the humanities and e-research, these ethnographic methods have been adapted. A number of conference presentations and publications (this one and this one, among others) on this topic have been the result.

An upcoming contribution in Social Studies of Science is called from From Co-location to Co-presence. Here’s what it’s about:

As STS scholars increasingly study forms of knowledge production where the space of the lab (or similar locale) is much less central, other ways of conceptualizing the field may be especially useful for ethnographic research. In particular, ethnographic approaches must loosen their grip on co-location as a necessary requirement for ‘being in the field’, if they are to consider important issues about knowledge production that arise in fields, such as those in the humanities or e-research. Key STS topics, like new forms of authoritative knowledge, the changing shape of scientific work, and dynamics of innovation can be explored through ethnography. But in order to do so, the ethnographic approach must adapt in order to study these fields in which research practices are not concentrated in lab-like spaces.

By using co-presence rather than co-location as a starting point to conceptualise and articulate fieldwork, new aspects of knowledge production are foregrounded in ethnographic studies. This research note proposes and discusses co-presence as an epistemic strategy that pays close attention to non-lab based knowledge production; that can embrace textuality, infrastructure and mediation; and that draws into relief the role of ethnographer as author, participant-observer and scholar.

Because it does not assume the centrality of shared space, the notion of co-presence can be useful in ethnographies of e-research, as well as of other fields in the sciences and humanities that involve highly mediated forms of research or where the lab does not figure so prominently.

This work was discussed at the workshop In the Game, held in Copenhagen last October as an AoIR pre-conference workshop.

Calling all readers…

What shall we read for our next reading group meeting?

 

 

 

Books, books, books, books, books, books, and books., originally uploaded by kennymatic.

Fieldwork is not what it used to be

The book has been on my desk for a while, waiting for the perfect reading motivation that is the reading group. I’m now a couple of chapters in… enough to be quite intrigued about the book’s aims. It takes on a very particular slice of academic work–paying a lot of attention to the professional ‘craft’ of fieldwork, as Marcus calls it. I’m about to start the empirical chapters, and I’m curious to read on:  To what extent are the implications of particular ways of developing this craft linked to the kinds of knowledge produced by ethnographers?

news from the fields

Things have been a bit quiet  on this blog, partly because of a newborn sibling (network realism). But this does not mean things have been quiet on the ground, in terms of ethnography at the VKS.

Smiljana has been busy scoping the field of digital humanities and is currently thinking about how to pursue observations of users who will be trying out some of the new tools that will be developed in Alfalab. She is considering video or desktop tracking mechanisms to do this. (Suggestions welcome!)

We have also been joined by Niels van Doorn, who is just completing a major project on gender, sexuality and embodiment as performed on internet platforms that feature user-generated content. He is preparing a new project on queer spaces at the intersections between digital and physical space. In this project, he will examine how people exercise their sexual citizenship through the creation of affective networks and spaces that are intertwined with new media technologies.

And Sarah de Rijcke gave a great presentation yesterday at a meeting to set up new fieldwork at the Rijksakademie. We came away from yesterday’s meeting with the feeling that this fieldwork was really going to be mutually beneficial and that the Rijksakademie staff was actually looking forward to having us around! Sarah will be starting there in November, right after she comes back from 4S, where we have a paper on the Network Realism project in a session organised by Catelijne Coopmans on “Data Riches: The Practices and Politics of Exploiting Digital Data Sets”.

My own fieldwork around practices using Flickr for the study of street art (part of the Network Realism project) has taken off in these past weeks. I’ve found some scholars of street art who are using Flickr (and other tools) at different points in their research, and many of them are willing to talk to me. I’ll be heading to Paris for some meetings with scholars at GRIS and to visit the street art exhibit Ne dans la rue, which itself has quite an impressive presence on Flickr.

Postdoc Opportunity at VKS

Applications are invited for three-month fellowships within the Virtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities and Social Sciences (VKS) for Spring 2010. The fellowship is designed for junior scholars who have recently received their PhDs in order to provide the following:

• experience of working within an interdisciplinary research group
• an opportunity to prepare material for publication
• the chance to develop new research ideas

Deadline for applications is 15 November 2009. Please find more information on the VKS website.

Reading Group Proposal

How about this new book from Cornell University Press on fieldwork? It has its own site, where some material from the book is made available. This is an edited volume, with a number of contributors who are well-known spokespeople of the American cultural anthropology scene–and several of whom have been involved in the anthropology in/of circulation statement a few months ago.

For this volume, perhaps we could all read the introduction and each pick one chapter we especially like to discuss? We will also experiment further in the coming sessions with ways of discussing/ approaching texts and issues.

Who would like to join? Lilia, are you up for this one? We’ll pick a date once we’re back from holidays.

Ethics of e-research at NCeSS

At a workshop on e-research organised by Nick Kankoswki in the framework of NCeSS 2009, we are presenting on the topic on ethics of e-research. This work is based on the experiences of the VKS in the past 3 years and on two workshops on ethics organised by the VKS in June 2008 and June 2009 (with KNAW). We have given our contribution a somewhat unusual form, putting forth our insights as a set of ‘frequently asked questions’. These FAQs can be found here. Reactions to these are very welcome, whether on the blog, face to face or via email.

Biecht

A fresh set of reviews appeared this week on the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies,  including my review of Internet Inquiry, edited by Markhan and Baym. Besides that fact that I really like the book, one of my motivations for writing the review was a guilty conscience…

This review is a way of assuaging my guilt for repeated comments made to Adolfo during his visit about his explanations of his research as combining online and offline aspects.  What an odd starting point, I exclaimed, no one uses that language analytically anymore! Well, that’s just not true, witness the entire section of the book Internet Inquiry that is set up around that dichotomy. I’m not going to repeat here what the problem is with that framing (read the review!) but I would like, hereby, to dedicate the review to Adolfo Estalella, in pennance for my pig-headed underestimation of the persistence of on/offline talk.

Emotions, selves and fieldwork

For our next meeting, we will be reading Sharon Traweek’s paper Warning Signs, and Ellis ‘ book, Final Negotiations. See you on the afternoon of the 12th!

ps.

Starting reading on the train yesterday. Strange experience. After about ten pages, I was quite grossed out with the whole thing. She was stupid. He was repulsive. Was I allowed to feel this way? Could I stop reading on the basis of this? Somewhat vindictively, I was thinking that by putting these characters, their emotions and their relationship so much to the forefront of this book, this was also entitling me to react to them on that basis. I managed to make myself read/skim/read through the first part. Stopped that when I got to the part where she becomes an unpaid nurse to a chronically ill tyrant. And then skimmed the last part, where she talks about writing the various versions of the book. And I read enough of that to realise that, yes, indeed, the whole point was more or less to provoke an emotional reading.

Now, having slept on this, I am feeling somewhat less vindictively repulsed. I’m also rather in awe of (and quite curious about) what it must have been like to publish something like this in the American academic climate of the mid-nineties, at the height of data-rape hysteria on campuses and institutionalised political correctness.

Lying is done… Part Two

Part of the reading group discussion on lying, and specifically of  ‘ten lies of ethnography’, by Gary Fine, published in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, and Peter Metcalf’s book took place last Friday in Amsterdam (Dina, Sarah and Anne). The discussion will continue here…

Metcalf’s book struck us all as a classic, a book to read and to reread, a book that would engage us in different ways at different times in our work. Not only is this book eminently well written, each of its sections is layered, bringing together a compelling narrative, an entry into debates in post-modern ethnography literature, as well as illustrating the links to be constructed between fieldwork and conceptual debates. This part of the discussion also led us to wonder: What is it about this book that makes it so ‘good to think with’, in dealing with issues of truth and epistemology?

We also found that issues of language and truth (How is writing a research plan lying?, asked Dina, or how can we think of  ‘truth as a language game’, as Sarah formulated it) were perhaps least explicitly dealt with in the book–though we did find ways to extrapolate from its contents as to how Metcalf might address such issues.

Another theme we discussed was the evolution of the relationship to the field, over the course of one’s career. We also wondered: At what point can one write such a book? When, and on what basis, can a scholar engage in this kind of writing?

The disappearing field was also striking in this account. How often do we hear that the pace of technological change is a particular challenge for ethnographers of contemporary culture? In the case of Borneo, ways of life are not standing still either, and this sense of urgency and fast-pace of internet researchers rather felt like a particular conceit, when reading Metcalfe’s descriptions of change.

We also briefly talked about Fine’s piece which considers ten ‘values’ that ethnographers are meant to enact, and related it to our discussion of Metcalfs’ book, in terms of the value of values.  Enacting such values might take a different form in different settings (ie what it means to be honest can vary…). We also debated the following: what is at stake in maintaining or breaching such values?

These are some highlights of the discussion, with the questions underlying the discussion foregrounded–looking forward to hearing from the all readers on these or other points.